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Feschuk: Patrick Chan wins Lou Marsh award

Toronto skater tops starry field to be named Canada’s athlete of the year.

World figure skating champion Patrick Chan, pictured after winning the ISU Grand Prix final Saturday in Quebec City,
won the Lou Marsh award Tuesday as Canada's athlete of the year.
(Paul Chiasson / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

While this country is brimming with world-class sporting talent — and while the Lou Marsh short list included among its ranks the world’s best women’s long-track speed skater, Christine Nesbitt, and the No. 1-ranked men’s shot putter, Dylan Armstrong — Chan ruled his sport with an authority that was unmatched by any of his compatriots. Not only did he capture the world championship in April in Moscow, he registered world-record scores in the process. Not only did he win the ISU Grand Prix final in Quebec City on Saturday, he also went unbeaten in competition for the calendar year. Undefeated is difficult to argue with, of course, which is a big part of why he was the overwhelming choice of Tuesday’s panel of sports writers, editors and broadcasters chaired by Olympic rowing great Silken Laumann.

Certainly the short list included an impressive list of worthy candidates. Along with Nesbitt and Armstrong, the selection committee acknowledged the merits of last year’s winner Joey Votto of the Cincinnati Reds, show-jumping champion Eric Lamaze and Milwaukee Brewers reliever John Axford. But nobody dominated a sport the way Chan dominated his.

And now that the figure-skating season is in a lull, Chan is pondering his next challenge — specifically, a trip to the Las Vegas strip. Chan’s birthday falls on a day synonymous with the kind of all-night debauchery that city of sin is famous for; he was a New Year’s Eve baby, after all. It just so happens that on this New Year’s Eve, he’ll turn 21 — or, as Chan put it, “the big 2-1.”

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“I actually spend most of my birthdays skiing, because I just love it so much — that’s more than enough to make me happy ... put me on the slope,” Chan said. “This is the first time I’m actually going somewhere where something bad can happen.”

Chan was speaking after a rough month on the competitive trail. He was still nursing the remnants of a cold and a nasty cough he picked up in Paris a few weeks back. And he was also raw from the effects of last week’s frenzy-creating news story in which he was quoted (in a months-old interview) musing about how he’d love to represent both Canada and his parents’ native China in international competition, and how, in his hockey-loving homeland, figure skating is an unappreciated art. The former was a pie-in-the-sky impossibility spoken in the wake of a trip to Beijing in which he’d communed with his Chinese roots. The latter was a true statement. Chan, a rare athlete who speaks his truth freely, has put the laughable outrage in perspective.

“Bad media or good media, I’ve realized it’s attention. I feel like a lot more people are recognizing, not only myself, but the sport,” he said. “And I got a lot of great mail and support. It was a wakeup call for me. It made me become more of a refreshed person with a refreshed perspective. It was special. There were some pretty entertaining comments — like, bad comments. I avoided reading some of the really bad ones. But there was more good fan mail that came in (on his website and Facebook page and Twitter account) which made me appreciate how great people really are, and how many people are behind me.

“People completely understood what I was implying. They said, basically, ‘You have to admit it, hockey is Canada’s sport, and it’s always going to be that way. You can’t do anything about it. But you have the full support of a lot of fans.’ ... There’s a well-rounded group of people who appreciate what we do as figure skaters.”

Chan’s success has its hockey angle, to be sure. He employs a strength and conditioning coach named Andy O’Brien, better known as the guru behind the chiselled physique of a former Lou Marsh winner named Sidney Crosby, the Pittsburgh Penguins star who won the award in 2008 and 2009. In the wake of a disappointing fifth-place finish at the Vancouver Olympics, Chan re-dedicated himself to health and wellness, adopting better sleep habits, a cleaner diet and a new commitment to the off-ice training. Chan said that since he began working out under O’Brien his body fat has dropped from about 11 per cent to about 7 per cent, and that he has become a far more durable and powerful performer.

He has also become a new master of the difficult quad jump — an athletic feat that wasn’t even in his arsenal at the Vancouver Games and without which it’s unlikely he would have won an historic trophy, named after a former Toronto Star sports editor, that was first bestowed in 1936.

“Wow. The Lou Marsh. This is where all the greats have been. You have Wayne Gretzky (a four-time winner), and it goes all the way back to the 1930s — pre-war. It’s just amazing to be put in that class,” Chan said. “It’s beyond winning the world records. It’s truly a Canadian award. I’m so proud.”

What’s left to do? Chan said he hopes to defend his world title in Nice, France, in the spring. And there’s a small matter of Olympic redemption a couple of years beyond that.

“Sochi (in 2014) is definitely in my plan. I have so much momentum right now and so much excitement doing what I do — I just hope I can keep it going,” he said. “What I experienced in Quebec, when I got on the ice and I was waiting to be announced, and the crowd was just ramping up the excitement in the rink and just clapping and cheering me on — that feeling, you can’t get it anywhere else. I think that’s what happens when athletes or hockey players retire. That’s the feeling you strive for, and that’s the feeling they miss. It’s a feeling you can’t replace. And you can’t really buy, either. It’s pretty special.”

Perhaps he’ll be able to reasonably replicate that rush at a Las Vegas card table, where Chan plans to put his experience as an amateur Internet poker player to the test.

“I’ll let you know if I feel the same way in Vegas,” Chan said, laughing. “You never know. Maybe I’ll stop skating right there and just gamble for a living.”

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